By pminton

The title of this post is in the last panel of an installment of Questionable Content, but the post is all about the accidental savant that is going to further rape my inner fanboy. I am, of course, speaking of George “Empire is my worst film” Lucas. According to a blog post on /Film George “revealed to Fox News that he will make two more live-action Star Wars films.” Only they’re going to be one-hour-long and made for TV,

“But they won’t have members of the Skywalker family as characters,” he said. “They will be other people of that milieu.”

Um, wait. I’m sorry, but wasn’t the entire point of the films, the comics, the novels and mostly everything else in the Star Wars universe about the Skywalkers? Most fans, when asked what Star Wars is about, will say something about the redemption of Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker. Also, I have to wonder (as does the author of the /Film blog) how are these going to be any different than the planned television series (the episodes are supposedly one hour long)? Did I mention that the series is supposed to air on the CW?

“This week on Star Wars the Series: guest stars The Fray!”

I’m going to make a comparison here that lots of people are going to dislike. Sorry, but it has to be done.
We all remember Elvis Presley at the end of his career: fat, shiny jumpsuits, big glasses and fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. What if Elvis had died earlier - like when we could still remember him as young and cutting-edge? Think about Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. I’m not saying I’m glad they died early - far from it. But what if they’d gone on to write jingles for TV commercials or something? What if Jim Morrison had sobered up and started writing poetry? Wait. Um. Right. Would we have fond memories of them then?

No.

I think the same needs to happen here with the Star Wars franchise. It needs to be over. No TV show. No more movies. No. More. Please. Let me remember Star Wars as young Elvis. Let me remember Han, Luke and Leia as the young, brash Heroes of the Rebellion. Let me remember the first time I saw that Star Destroyer come onscreen over my head (albeit I didn’t get to see it on a big screen until 1997). Even though Episodes I - III Have been tough on Star Wars fans the world over, old and young, if we end it right now we can all still have fond memories of the series.

I don’t want this much beloved franchise end up bloated, strung-out and dead on a toilet.

The thing is: if these movies and the TV show get made…I’ll watch. Much like all those fans still paid to see Elvis in the later years…I’ll watch. Then when all is eventually over, I’ll just have to hope that my fond memories of Star Wars are not lost to memories of Party of Five: Bounty Hunters and Tatooine (Lucasfilm’s Smallville).

I would start an online petition if I thought it might work. I would write a post on the starwars.com message board, but I’m sure “the George” never reads them. My best bet might be writing a personal plea on behalf of geeks, nerds and dorks everywhere directly to Mr. Lucas himself. Perhaps the millions of souls crying out in terror would not be suddenly silenced.

Then again, I bet it’s hard to care when you’ve got several tens of millions of dollars to soothe one’s conscience.

I’m not particularly a fan of horror movies. I don’t get much out of slasher-style blood-and-guts terrorizing. It doesn’t scare me, and I don’t enjoy watching carnage just for the sake of indulgence.

I am, however, a very big fan of genuinely frightening movies. There are those rare films that are believable, genuine and very much human - and when they deliver honest chills, I’m definitely up for it. I’m talking about titles like The Shining, 28 Days Later, and the original Jaws. Even the brilliant Shaun of the Dead qualifies, and it isn’t a pure scare-film - it’s a hybrid comedy-horror film. Pan’s Labyrinth was another hybrid: a touching, dramatic fantasy-horror amalgamation.

So when these rare movies come along, I get pretty excited. And tomorrow, another is on its way to U.S. screens: South Korean masterpiece, The Host.

From the official website:

The talk of the 2006 Cannes International Film Festival and the latest film from critically acclaimed visionary director BONG Joon-ho, THE HOST has already garnered a substantial amount of international buzz. Utilizing state-of-the-art special effects, courtesy of a creative partnership between Weta Workshop (King Kong, The Lord of the Rings) and The Orphanage (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Sin City), THE HOST is both a creature-feature thrill ride and a poignant human drama.

Gang-du (SONG Kang-ho) works at a food-stand on the banks of the Han River. Dozing on the job, he is awakened by his daughter, Hyun-seo ( KO A-sung), who is angry with him for missing a teacher-parent meeting at school. As Gang-du walks out to the riverbank with a delivery, he notices that a large crowd of people have gathered, taking pictures and talking about something hanging from the Han River Bridge. The otherwise idyllic landscape turns suddenly to bedlam, when a terrifying creature climbs up onto the riverbank and begins to crush and eat people. Gang-du and his daughter run for their lives, but suddenly the being grabs Hyun-seo and disappears back into the river. The government announces that the monstrous thing apparently is the Host of an unidentified virus. Having feared the worst, Gang-du receives a phone call from his daughter who is frightened, but very much alive. Gang-du soon makes plans to infiltrate the forbidden zone near the Han River to rescue his daughter from the clutches of the horrifying Host.

The description is a bit diminutive for what is ultimately a very emotionally complex story. We’re not talking about another cut-and-dried monster movie here - the same way that Pan’s Labyrinth was so much more than just a monster movie. The Host is part family-life drama, part special effects masterwork, part serious freakout.

Rumas over at 4CR has a well-penned review that elucidates things a little more:

It’s a hard film to categorize into any one genre — too tender to be called horror, too frantic to be called drama, too socially important to be called action.

Bong Joon-ho, the film’s director, is without a doubt the coolest and most down to earth big-name filmmaker in Korea today, and his previous two pictures, Barking Dogs Never Bite and Memories of Murder, were both fantastic. He’s a breath of fresh air amongst the pretentious and showy directors of his generation (read: Park Chan-wook), and he seems determined to tackle something entirely new with each project. He reminds me of Chris Nolan in that, despite being a popular young director, his movies bear no resemblence to the kind of MTV cinema that marks so many of his contemporaries’ work.

I think that’s enough talk. Just go out and see the movie.

*UPDATE: Now that the film is released, here is some critical acclaim for you to peruse.

What is it about the movies that compels us to keep coming back? After any given summer, you might have seen 15 mediocre films that collectively cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce, and generated billions in ticket sales.

But how many times did you walk away disappointed? Or worse, how many times did you leave the theater totally unaffected? You drove home, unmoved by the movie du jour, and forgot what you just saw in no more time than it took to turn on your video game console.

It happens all the time. In fact, I’d say it constitutes the majority of peoples’ movie-going lives.

Don’t get me wrong - I appreciate a healthy portion of mindless entertainment as much as anyone. But if it’s all you have to subsist on, your imagination is going to starve. I don’t know about you, but I want a healthier, more satisfying diet.

So what is it that keeps us paying our seven, eight bucks a trip to watch something we know will be shallow, unsatisfying three-hour monotony?

It’s our hope for magic.

Movies are the ballads of our time. They are the bedtime stories, fables and epics that keep the last embers of an oral storytelling tradition burning. We are fascinated by stories, by the fantastic. And movies have the great capacity to truly awaken those deepest reckonings of our past and of our childhoods. We keep paying our eight dollars in the hope that we’ll walk away with the taste of magic in our mouths.

I can count on two hands the full compliment of films that genuinely changed me - genuinely fed my imagination. Somehow, through whatever means those few movies employed, I left them better - or worse - but changed. The best of them are now in the company of Guillermo Del Toro’s El Laberinto del Fauno.

This isn’t a review or synopsis of the film, so I’m not going to explain the story here. I want you to go see the film and discover the story for yourself. But I want to say something about the power and, yes, terror of Pan’s Labyrinth.

If ever there was a modern incarnation of the traditional fable or fairy tale, this is it. As all good fairy tales do, the story puts innocence squarely in the heart of grim, violent reality. Ofelia, a small girl caught in the clutches of the Spanish Civil War, and literally in the clutches of her heartless fascist step-father, must survive the trials of real life and the trials of the labyrinth’s faun at the same time.

Ofelia is the fable’s hero. She is the innocent, childish light in the dark world of adults. But her innocence is not simpleness, and her ability to know the truth belies her age. Ofelia protects her pregnant mother, cares for her unborn baby brother and yet maintains her sense of faithful wonder.

We are never given reason to question the truth of what Ofelia sees - be it real or not. Innocence is chief among her virtues, and the real-world trials she overcomes in the story are never separated from the fairy-world trials. For her, the labyrinth is a single, continuous maze, populated throughout with monsters of unimaginable variety.

When Ofelia first meets Pan, the faun, his striking monstrosity consumes the screen. He is inexplicably disturbing and beautiful - utterly compelling. And he is but the first of several fantastic creatures she will encounter, each more frightening and unique than the last. The pale man Ofelia finds in the room behind her wall is so harrowing, but so strangely familiar, that you cannot help but be both afraid of and captivated by him.

Each of these creatures is meticulously crafted, brilliantly-conceived. Would that it could, the film might spend hours with each of them and still leave you wanting more.

But they aren’t by any stretch the only monsters in the movie. The fascists of Spain’s Nationalist rebellion are painted with an equally-mortifying brush. Captain Vidal, Ofelia’s step-father and commander of the woodland outpost, is a complex and brutal villain. By turns charismatic and violent, he is the monster in Ofelia’s waking life. He is the monster whose face we recognize from our own real lives.

The incredibly violent depictions of the war are gruesome. Del Toro never hesitates to make the real-world monsters behave even more despicably than the fairytale monsters, and he never hesitates to show it in graphic detail. It is very adult, and frightening, and yet part of what makes the story as compelling and uncompromising as it is.

For Ofelia, there are horrors of equal imposition in both places: the fantastical, terrifying monsters of the fairy world are equalled by the unapologetic violence of wartime Spain. Ofelia must choose, in both worlds, the correct path to navigate her mazes - and at each turn, her very life is at stake. The classical fable is more than just a morality tale, it is a complex guide to resisting temptation, fear, and insolence. Pan’s Labyrinth, like Grimm’s tales before it, paints a dark canvas which relies on genuine innocence and virtue to bring it light.

As unforgiving as fairy tales can be, the silver lining of a happy ending turns dark to light, and evil is conquered. So it is, in its way, with Pan’s Labyrinth. But Del Toro finds no way to separate the real and fairytale worlds, and so the happy ending is something of a labyrinth itself. You are left to navigate your way back out, to find your own path to Ofelia’s fate.

It is here in the end that the power of a film like this strikes you. You realize that you’re taking something of the lesson with you; you’re changing your heart about things. There’s sadness and a bit of heartbreak. But there’s joy in knowing that doing what’s right - navigating the labyrinth of life with virtue - has an ultimate reward that transcends the grim reality of this world.

Pan’s Labyrinth is gorgeous, violent, sweet and moving. It isn’t a monster movie, or a war movie, or a clever morality play. It is all those things and still more than the sum of its parts. It is magic. And you shouldn’t deny yourself the chance to taste it.

I’ve seen plenty of Final Fantasy fan videos, but nothing comes close to the genius of Mark Leung’s College Saga.

If you’ve ever played any iteration of the Final Fantasy series - on any platform - then there’s nothing I need to say to preface this for you. If you haven’t, then all you need to know is that this is flipping awesome.
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